As it happens, this was the next quote to pop up in the quote box and it was too good not to pass along:

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. – E E Cummings

So my waiting around yesterday had me predicting the news re my Quilt National entry and today I received an email saying that my quilt was not chosen for the 2013 QN. I thought it might not, that it might be too simple in design for some, that it might have been a tough photo to get etc. I’m good with it.

Ninety percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen

Grats to all those who got in, I’m super excited for you! If you can go to the opening in May, I’d encourage that you do so – it’s an experience you won’t want to miss.

Grats to the rest of us, for doing the work and sending in the entry! I’m super excited for us too, (ok, maybe a little less excited LOL) because you know what? If you don’t enter, you’ll never get into any show. If you keep making work, you’ll keep growing and knowing that you’re going in at least one direction – forward.

I love this quilt and had to make it as part of my work. I stand by it and where it is in my timeline of work and will see where the road takes me next.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” — Leonard Bernstein on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr

Day of putting right
ready for…I’ve no idea
it’s just washed curtains.

A long day waiting
many useless papers tossed
a rain October.

The leaves lingering,
mouldering against the step
October’s wet smell.

update:

to read my own words
written down here long ago:
the past and future.

I have fond memories and kind thoughts about Electric Company and Sesame Street and all, but I also have clear memories of Julia Child changing how I thought about food and Mr. Rogers seeming like the perfect next door neighbor.

Recently, you’ll remember I got myself to watch The Ring Cycle from the Metropolitan Opera, via PBS’s Great Performances. Four nights of drama, singing and fabulous staging. Better views than what I would have seen if I’d been sitting in the theater, although I don’t go so far as to say that the theater-going experience is not important.

So, if I’d want to attend one of the upcoming season’s Ring Cycles what would it cost me? $300-$330 per person for the extreme nosebleed seats and $1000-$2600 for orchestra and primo seats. So, $75+ to $250-650 per night.

When we talk about making art a part of daily life and making it accessible, this is part of the equation. It has to be affordable. And yes, local companies do stage classics at lower price admissions and I applaud them for it.

Still, I got to watch the most current version of a very lavishly staged production by one of the top companies in the world for the cost of my tax dollars and donations to PBS. Other nights I learn about writers and artists and history and nature.

Even as I turn off the channel during the local station’s endless fundraising with pandering memory-lane music programming, I know it’s important to support PBS and the local station’s dedication to putting alternative programming out there. In these days when schools strip all art and music out of their curricula, it’s even more important to make them accessible to everyone.